Occupy Napa (and Sonoma and Burgundy and Bordeaux)

One of my loyal readers, perhaps inspired by Wine Economist posts about bargain wines and Martians versus Wagnerians, writes to suggest that I organize an “Occupy the Vineyards” movement. The purpose? To protest that part of the wine world that focuses on iconic wines for elites. What about the rest of us, he says? What about the other 99% of wine drinkers who are looking for good, affordable quotidian wines and don’t really care about impossibly expensive 100-point wines?

Not Wine Porn

It is a very Wagnerian idea (the reference here is to Philip Wagner, who promoted a democratic notion of wine here in the U.S., not the more famous aristocratic composer) and I am very sympathetic towards it. Wagnerian wines don’t have to be cheap cheap cheap, they just need to be good drinkable, affordable wines Wine food, not wine porn, if you know what I mean. A sensible idea.

So I started fooling around on the internet, searching for titles like “Occupy Napa” and “Occupy Bordeaux.” I figured that a catchy name would help make the point.

But they’re already taken — by groups affiliated with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Occupy Napa leads weekend protests at a Napa, California town square. Occupy Bordeaux seems to be part of the broader Occupy France movement. (I thought France was already occupied …)

A CafePress website sells Occupy Bordeaux souvenirs including T-shirts, water bottles and the neat 20 ounce drinking glass pictured here, but I don’t think it is directly affiliated with the group in France. The Occupy Together website has a cool interactive map that shows “Occupy” movements around the world and lists their websites if you are interested in seeing how this movement has evolved.

The Occupy Principle

I like the idea of promoting a more casual idea of wine, but I guess I won’t be using the “Occupy” trademark, since it would be too easy to confuse the wine group with the larger transnational advocacy movement. But I think that what I am calling the “occupy principle” probably applies to both.

Usually we think that movements need to stand for something quite specific — to have an clear agreed agenda — and in the long run I think this is very important. But in the short run sometimes it helps if a movement is a little ambiguous, with a flexible identity that can lend it self to several different purposes and attract a good many followers. I think this ambiguity helped the Occupy Wall Street movement to gain initial attention and to spread as it has done.

The Occupiers I have read about resent and oppose unequal wealth and power (the gap between the 1% and the rest), but differ in many other respects. It will be interesting to see if a clearly focused agenda emerges and, if it does, what specific goals are adopted. Perhaps, of course, the protest itself and the consciousness-raising it provokes are sufficient as a first step.

Conspicuous Non-Consumption?

A wine movement for the 99% would surely bring together the wine world equivalent of “strange bedfellows,” too. Some supporters are just cheap (or thrifty, if you will) and want a little respect for their self-restraint. Others may be against an elitist idea of wine or oppose conspicuous consumption (which in the case of trophy wines often takes the rather bizarre form of conspicuous non-consumption — costly “collector” wines to look at and talk about, not necessarily to drink).

The reader who originally suggested the Occupy Wine idea has a more basic approach: wine doesn’t have to be a mystery (and most wine isn’t) and it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg (most wine doesn’t). There’s no reason that perfectly decent, relatively affordable wine can’t be a part of almost everyone’s daily life. That’s a Wagnerian attitude through and through and I can see why he wantd to see it given more attention in the wine world.

The Commanding Heights

So if there were to be an Occupy Wine protest, where would we gather and what would we do? That’s a bit of a problem since the places that sell the most wine (including supermarkets and wine shops) often have a lot of choices for the 99 percent — not much to oppose there. Costco is the largest wine retailer in the U.S. and although it does sell some icon wines, most of the products are more affordable. Most 99-percenters probably view Costco as friendly territory because of its policy of marking up wine only 15% for most bottles and 17% for house brand Kirkland Signature wines.

I suppose that we could protest in front of high end restaurants that sell superstar wines at super-nova prices. But I think restaurant wine mark ups are an issue of their own. And besides, the smell coming out of the kitchen would probably make me crazy. We could meet at Trader Joe’s to acknowledge the Two Buck Chuck phenomenon, but it wouldn’t be the same.

No, we would need to occupy the “commanding heights” — which in the case of wine means the wine media, where the 1 percent wines are praised and raised to an often unreachable altar. But there are flaws in the plan to Occupy Wine Spectator, too. First, all the popular wine magazines are making efforts to reach price-sensitive “99%” buyers just now, even if they also run stories about one percent wines. Even Wine Advocate identifies good values and I have seen box wines and house brands included in some wine magazine reviews.

Fait Accompli?

The other problem is that I am not sure that there is a market for an alternative Occupy Wine magazine that would focus on everyday wine values and ordinary wine lifestyles. The target audience probably wouldn’t buy it — they’d rather spend their money on wine than wine literature. And in any case there are several wine blogs that cater to the good value audience.

Maybe … and this is only speculation … maybe we have already occupied wine and we just don’t realize it? The wines are there and so are we, the 99 percent.

:D! It seems that the feeling is sprouting up everywhere. Just a a couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with colleagues in Denver, and we were reminiscing about how in the seventies wine professionals (like me) could get together and share bottles of La Tache, Musigny, Petrus, Latour, Leoville-Las-Cases, etc., because we could easily buy these in local wine stores for $20 to $35 — while bemoaning the fact that new colleagues, just getting into starting in studies for MW, MS, etc., do not have access to those wines at all.

So we had a good laugh, spontaneously declaring “Occupy Bordeaux,” reflecting the sentiment that it would be cool to get those wines out of the 1%% Yeah, right…

The Wine Economist

What would you get if you crossed the Wine Spectator, America's best-selling wine magazine, with the Economist, the world's leading business weekly? The answer is this blog, The Wine Economist, which analyzes and interprets today's global wine markets. Staff: Mike Veseth (editor-in-chief) & Sue Veseth (contributing editor).